


Sometimes Human Infants Kill Their Mothers

by Shoshanna



Category: Space: Above and Beyond
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1996-04-02
Updated: 1996-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:28:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1404865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoshanna/pseuds/Shoshanna





	Sometimes Human Infants Kill Their Mothers

Sometimes human infants kill their mothers.

You wait, as ordered, silent on the slab,  
Cold tile through thin cotton at your thighs,  
And in the rippling plane of liquid glass  
The hand, reflected.

                           Sitting once in class,  
The instructor's drone, the monitors' slow pace  
Between the desks. It might be true,  
You weren't quite sure, but--experiment?--wrote anyway,  
Quickly, before the steps could pause, the hand descend,  
Among your notes, four words.  
"I hate the monitors."  
And waited, sick with joy, for them to know.  
The monitors walk by, and glance, and pass.

There are no monitors in the sky.  
Birds wheel and turn, and no one monitors!

And in that class you learned, at last, the lie.

And in the twisted, curved, reflecting glass  
The knife glints, falling, and you turn  
And block, and twist, and strike, and strike, and strike,  
Smoothly, quickly, as you have been taught.  
It was easy. Why should it be so easy?  
Is it right, that it should be so easy?

Nine months old, and through the door no one of you has ever passed.  
Rough cobblestones and rainwet leaves beneath bare feet, and broken glass  
In alleys, where you sleep. The buildings reach up squarely toward the sky.  
There are no monitors here.

Sometimes infants kill their human mothers.


End file.
